


Compression of Time

by Anonymous



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Implied Sexual Content, Implied/Referenced Character Death, M/M, Past Character Death, Post-Flood of Light but before Shadowbringers, implied End of the World, two ghosts walk into a sin eater
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-02
Updated: 2021-03-02
Packaged: 2021-03-14 10:41:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,356
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29790705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/
Summary: the particular isolation born of being the men that caused the flood and failed to die in so doing, and coming together in the aftermath. the downsides of having the hero be a loving man.
Relationships: Ardbert/Mitron
Kudos: 8
Collections: Anonymous





	Compression of Time

When he comes to, he is still in Amh Araeng. Crowds no longer flee, no longer scream. 

No bodies. No rot, no perfect marble stillness. Chunks of crystallized light erupting from the ground, the reddish sand unmoved from when the impact hit.

He has no way to know what time it is. How long it has been. 

He picks himself up in silence. Dusts sand off of himself more out of habit than out of need. Takes too-silent steps one at a time, putting distance between his last failure and himself.

\---

Monsters roam the land. Sin Eaters, they are called, for their flesh of white and gold. Gore won’t stick to them. Pain won’t make them flinch. Only rarely are some capable of sound, guttural noises and what could be whispered words.

They turn what they don’t kill. 

His axe swings clean through them as if they were air, leaving them unscathed. Their claws and jaws and blades snap uselessly through his body, only a faint chill reminding him of where mortal wounds would be.

He throws himself at them even when it is useless. He says he will save someone someday.

In the end, they stop coming to the corner of Amh Araeng that he still haunts.

\---

He finds a gap in the wall of light close to the Pristine Palace.

A clean cleave, reaching up all the way to where the translucent wall of crystal blends into the sky. Wide enough for an amaro cart. Reddish sand pools at the feet of the wall, the color fading as it joins the great white beyond.

So close to the flood, he no longer is the only one without a shadow. Slices of refracted color pierce through him and glimmer underfoot as he treads closer than anything living can.

It almost feels solid. Like he was staring back at the falling cliffs of Kholusia staring down the sun and the waves. Like staring down at his own makeshift grave.

He certainly is not there anymore. 

He goes through that gap. Nowhere awaits.

\---

The Empty is flat. Salt-white sky, salt-white soil. Reflected sunlight that should sear his eyes out of his skull. The dead don’t have such concerns. 

The dead can, however, get bored. Have wandering thoughts. There was a topography to Amh Araeng; somewhere, he knows that the land should fall to meet a sea that no longer exists. Or perhaps it still is there, still as a cup of milk and just as pallid. Somewhere else, it should rise into mountains, full of ore that is likely now some other form of crystalline lattice blended into more of the same.

Instead there is perfectly level terrain. Further than the eye can see, marred only by the fading height of the wall of light at his back. Were he not a shade, walking this would be easy, tireless, numbing. Something to get lost in, having sound and life fade away.

He tastes ash in his mouth as he has not, cannot, since he came back to himself. He stomps his feet more as he walks, willing himself to leave an imprint on this powder-covered wasteland. 

\---

He sees something rise ahead of him. Not the wall- that has long faded from sight- but something else. Rounded, smooth as the inside of a shell. He picks up his pace to meet it, to come closer to this thing that breaks the perfect stillness.

The terrain breaks around it. Rising and falling levels of stone, of spilling bone-sand. He wills himself to find hand and footholds, even if his limbs go through the stone as much as they do anything else. With a thought, his feet are on the next stretch of ground he must cross to find feathers sharp as blades, claws like polished metal.

A Sin Eater then. Far, far bigger than he is. Than the Shadowkeeper was. Than anything was, really, even the fantastical creatures of the Source.

It is as still as anything else is. As the only thing in the Empty is. The top of it has faded color, dull due to inactivity; the rest of it is a tangle of limbs and wings and something that looks like it could lead inside. A grievous wound it has never had a cause to take, or simply being built as eldritch beings may be.

He steps close. He was never cautious in life. In death he is impervious to it. Closer still. Close enough to lay a hand against its stony flank, finding the surface smooth and unyielding. Oddly lacking the chill something that has never seen sunlight nor a living pulse should have.

Substantial. Solid even to his dull senses.

He doesn’t think it twice before finding his way inside.

\---

He didn’t expect to find anything organic.

The limbs are elongated, mockeries of what muscle, bones and veins should look like. Gilded, or cast in marble. A halo spins in slow rotations around the body, washed-out gold reflecting wan light, unable to even make a breeze. What he thought was a way in was merely a play of the scant shadows, limbs joining the body in awkward angles and broken poses, so he must climb. The surface is smooth, but the sheer determination that let him reach this Sin Eater in the middle of nowhere serves him well still.

He didn’t expect to find dancing lights either. Dim, to be sure. Patterns broken by static, by jittering motion, by disuse. Far larger on the inside than what lay outside, illuminated only by the hazy glow of his own body. He is mindful not to trip, now that he can.

He still does, a little. Over nothing, the floor smooth despite the patterns scratched into the glassy surface. There is no one to see. No one to laugh.

The spot he settles in is a wide room, surrounded by those strange stuttering runes. Dull and dark as nearly nothing else is, but broken all the same. The platform is flat, hewn from something crystalline, with a raised podium in the middle. A screen, a hovering pattern over its top.

He presses a finger to it. It is as immaterial as he is, spinning shapes and mirages.

\---

The scream almost knocks him on his ass.

Light and static. White noise made all-consuming, literal, the dark of the great Sin Eater’s guts torn apart by images of the outside.

Things Ardbert almost recognizes.

Ardbert. He is-

\---  
-is something not someone not is not-  
\---

Another touch on the control panel. Not light. Not Light. Not solid and Ardbert steps back from the podium since trying to work that set of screens is getting him nowhere. The screaming is loud, incoherent, sourceless even as images spin.

Outside. Fur and blackened leather. A sky made heavy by wicked white. Blood on his axe.

He is alone inside a Sin Eater, and it hits him that they can feel pain after they turn. Absent of anything better, anything more reachable than scattering, static-filled displays over his head, Ardbert returns to the control panel. Presses one incorporeal hand against an ear as if it would muffle the noise.

Squints at text scrolling through the display over the podium.

\---  
-aether not blood not flesh not soul need to not be flesh not be not-  
\---

“Hello?”

The screaming stops. Takes a breath, inasmuch as Sin Eaters breathe. Ardbert has seen no lungs, nor anything to indicate life as he knows it.

He is not alive as he knows it either. He repeats his question, looking around, hands away from his axe as much as they are away from the control panel. Bereft of motion, the inner room falls dark again, waiting. By the glow of his own soul, he sees more distant runes and logograms think in slow turns and bursts of scrambled images.

\---  
-voice not my voice someone’s voice i know voice i know what a voice is what it says someone’s voice is it-  
\---

The display over the control panel lights up again. Whirrs softly, wan and stable. Symbols Ardbert cannot read but feel so familiar move over the image, looping, constant.

Too old for Old Voeburtite, the alphabet all wrong. Ronkan script? He should’ve paid attention to Lamitt or Nyelbert, more of it, but the more he looks at the script the less it looks like the neat blocks and lines of Ronka. He’s seen it somewhere, he knows it, he can’t remember. Not on the tip of his tongue but in the back of his throat.

\---  
-loghrif loghrif where is my loghrif who is my loghrif who is i need loghrif please wake up please come for me-  
\---

Ardbert presses his finger again to the control panel. Perhaps the Sin Eater will start back up again. Perhaps it will do something Ardbert can understand.

Once. Twice. The full of his hand fits with room to spare, even with all of his fingers splayed out, palm flat over air pretending as if he was going to touch something. Anything. Runes as ethereal as those Nyelbert wove around him or as the carvings Lamitt demanded he lift her on her shoulder to read.

The lights shiver, grow brilliant for a moment, then with a groan die out.

He stands there until his eyes grow accustomed to the dark and find nothing. The control panel is inert, and his hand goes through it as he has gone through most other things.

He waits for a moment more before heading back out. The glow of his soul leading his steps with certainty down the sinewy paths of the Sin Eater’s body and into the milk-white sun.

\---

Ardbert looks out over the Empty, sitting atop the great Sin Eater’s back. There is a faint reflection of him, cast in distorted blues, in the glassy surface that seems to crown the monster’s… skull. He’ll call it that. He had chosen not to marvel at the image, instead sitting on it with care instilled in muscle memory to not sink his axe into what could be fragile ground.

The wall of Light is nowhere to be seen. He has nothing but time to find it again, were he so minded to do it. Around him, the plains are broken only close to the main body of the beast. Claws and limbs that sink gracelessly into the dust, a halo that rotates slower than the invisible sun slicing into and out of marble.

A long road awaits him were he so minded to leave. 

He hesitates as he had not done in life. As he did only once in life, Cy- the Shadowkeeper crumpled on the floor waiting for his strike. Spitting out his friend turned traitor from the smoke and ichor.

They had all walked away from that then.

Ardbert blinks away the thoughts before standing up and stubbornly seeking his way down. He could jump, of course. He has no limbs that can break, nor would this be his highest tumble. But he is in no rush, cannot rush.

His upside-down self sinks into the marble carapace below the glass skull-cap and he lets himself sink.

\---  
The control room is unchanged. Empty, dark. There is a whirr of breath. There is a stutter of runes, briefly blinking light into the space then turning away when it’s only him. A deadened control panel that shows only static white.

He taps his finger. His palm. 

\---  
-not Loghrif not my Loghrif-  
\---

“I can say hello again.”

\---  
-voice still not Loghrif i know this voice i know this not-Loghrif i have-  
\---

“Not that it did much. You can hear me?”

\---  
-speaks to me sees me sees-  
\---

The control panel blinks. Dark to light, to some distorted flower-like pattern, to static again. Ardbert taps at it when it goes dark once more.

“I’ll take that as a yes.”

\---  
-not Loghrif i have heard this voice i know this voice i-  
\---

“What were you trying to say last time? Over here?”

Another tap of his fingers. He cannot make the letters show up beyond his mind’s eye, but he finds he remembers them perfectly nonetheless. It was a simple message really. Seven symbols strung together, repeating as many times as they fit into the small screen. Fading in and out like the tide against the shore.

“Or show, I suppose. The screaming I could understand.”

Sound and fury. Images that couldn’t remain. Fur, and blackened leather, and-

\---  
-you killed my Loghrif you killed Loghrif YOU KILLED LOGHRIF-  
\---

The room shudders. Breathes in, color swelling into the runes. Ardbert braces himself against the noise, grits his teeth, finds himself biting out a curse as he hears the cacophony rise. His hand pulls away from the control panel, unwilling to overbalance into a podium even if it wouldn’t hurt.

He goes to grab at his axe, hand finding purchase against the hilt of his own weapon. It is reassuring enough to hold, even if Bravura can no longer strike. He is sluggish unsheathing it, the noise one that rattles against his soul as nothing does, nothing since the Source has, and yet nothing comes.

Nothing more than words.

Ardbert’s mouth falls open at the accusation. Curves into a snarl he doesn’t feel, not beyond fighting to find his own volume.

He shouts an Ascian’s name into an empty room. Standing upright, as he had in Laxan Loft, heading into the depths of the keep proper. Branden’s heavier footsteps to his left, the metallic clink of Renda-rae’s jewelry too loud even to his ears.

There is silence within the Sin Eater’s belly amidst the dancing lights.

\---  
-i am Mitron of the Convocation of the servants of Zodiark i am Loghrif’s partner i am-  
\---

He sees the first string of characters- Loghrif’s name, he now knows- repeated again and again in the air around him. Then more strings, more complex and void of meaning. They shift, coalesce into a tangle of words and smoke, visual corruption that renders a darkened cloud.

The mark of Mitron hovers close to Ardbert’s eye level before the man himself slumps out of the ether. Graceless, runes clinging to his form like cobwebs. He is on his feet instead of hovering as Ascians were wont to do, curved as if the battle had been but a moment ago.

Ardbert settles Bravura in his hands. Watches the Ascian watch him, panting for breath, a scar splitting one of his cheeks below the lip of the crimson mask.

Mitron looks away. To both of his sides. As if before him was only empty air, and not Ardbert with his weapon bared.

\---  
-i am not alone i cannot be alone Loghrif ardbert he killed Loghrif he cannot take me has to-  
\---

“Here.”

He lowers his weapon. He could still strike, fast as anything, but he won’t if the Ascian isn’t seeing him.

He has nothing but time. He can wait for Mitron to notice. 

“Straight ahead.”

Doesn’t mean he can’t nudge. Mitron’s concealed gaze jerks around again, finds Ardbert watching. For a moment, it is silent save for harried breaths the Ascian takes. Still save for the rise and fall of a chest, the twitch of Ardbert’s fingers on the ax’s haft.

Mitron’s hands glow. A blast of stygian light roars. Ardbert brings his axe up, blade breaking through the spell bringing it away from his core.

The lights die. 

Lowering his weapon reveals the Ascian is also gone. 

\---  
-not enough aether not enough not enough soul i’m sorry Loghrif i cannot-  
\---

“Mitron?”

Ardbert paces the room. Wan light follows him, pushes light to reveal no shadows, no bodies. Bravura is heavy in his arms, but he doesn’t keep it raised. He should hear something, the words of another spell, the cadence of another’s breath. His heavy steps on the ground, even if he’s not heard those in however long.

“Show yourself. I’m not going to be swinging at empty air.”

Yet. He might have to, if the Ascian continues his games. He’s got time aplenty, but he’s not the mind for it. Ardbert moves in as wide a circle as he can make it around the platform before returning to the middle, to the empty control panel with its faint glow and illegible symbols. Mitron is nowhere to be found.

Mitron had not attacked. Or could not attack.

Ardbert picks up the string of characters that means Loghrif, finds he still cannot read the rest. Gibberish and magic symbols that he misses Nyelbert for.

“Catch your breath then.” A pause. He doesn’t know what makes him sigh, look around again. As if he could will the Ascian to meet his gaze or heed his words. “I’ll be outside.”

\---  
-outside there is an outside ardbert is outside he killed Loghrif killed Loghrif killed-

Without even a ghost’s token aether, the lights dull. Dim to naught.

-ardbert is outside outside please don’t-  
\---

He paces around the base of the great Sin Eater’s body.

Still lying down uselessly. Limbs leaden and tangled. There’s nothing humanoid in them, though he knows the Sin Eaters retained at least the visuals of people. A head, a face. Maybe the great ones don’t. Maybe the inhuman ones don’t.

Mitron mostly looked human. A head, a face under a mask. Claws upon his hands only by artifice. Loghrif had made a concession to vanity, painted lips in a strikingly dark shade. They had needed to warp Cy-- the Shadowkeeper with their magics into that foul wolf, when he wouldn’t attack, and when she wouldn’t attack either. Then all the rest, any who didn’t surrender when Laxan Loft was surrounded and besieged. And yet, when he found them deep within the fortress, they looked human. 

Soaked with rain and blood. Armed like men were, a fine war hammer and a lance. Defiant to the last, to intertwined souls and Mitron’s ghastly scream as Ardbert tore through them with an axe of purest Light.

\---  
-its so quiet so quiet-  
\---

He loops once. Twice to find his way atop the Sin Eater’s skull again, wishing he could trail dust over the glassy blue to give his eyes some respite. The body is twisted, bloated, colors washed out by Light or made too vibrant by its poison.

Ardbert sees nothing but Mitron’s ruin and empty space. The edge of the Flood will not reappear before he has left Mitron’s gaol long behind under the horizon; he will not find it as easily, were he to lose it from sight.

Another loop. Another time he finds himself atop its glassy head. His upside down reflection finds no one to meet his steps.

Ardbert sinks down with it.

\---

“Hello again.”

The lights grow brighter slowly. Ardbert feels himself watched; turning reveals the Ascian is still not there, so wherever his vantage point is it certainly is well-hidden. Within hearing range, though Ardbert is aware that doesn’t mean much.

He is inside the Sin Eater’s body, after all.

Bravura remains strapped to his back. He holds his arms up, to his sides, palms obviously empty. A taunt more than a surrender, but neither in truth.

“I won’t attack if you don’t. I won’t speak alone either.”

Silence is his answer. The slow revolution of the glimmering displays along the wall. The quiet whirr of machinery that Ardbert still cannot see.

The control panel beeps behind him.

Ardbert turns to it, sets his palm atop the glowing display. More white noise, and then the telltale sound of a portal from the dark.

Mitron’s steps aren’t soundless. He’s across from the podium, face half-concealed by his mask, glowing red mark concealing the scar that breaks the symmetry of his features. He finds there is no intimidation in it now, not when he’s unsure that the Ascian can in fact see him.

“Straight ahead. At the control panel.”

The mark fades. Mitron stares at Ardbert, then gestures with a hand. When the dark clouds wreathe him, he bats at them with his bare hands, kicks them away.

\---  
-so quiet so empty can’t be empty i can hear him i can feel-  
\---

Gravel rasping out a spell, waves breaking on the shore. The dark binds him, stinging, and Ardbert yelps as the sensation is more than he’s had in-

-so long. Long enough.

Mitron’s gaze snaps up. His jaw goes slack under his mask. The spell falters, the lights dim.

The Ascian reaches out.

\---  
-fur and metal and fur and metal this is ardbert-  
\---

Ardbert lets his hand be pulled closer to the Ascian. It is still less bright than it was before, but everything holds.

Mitron’s hand around his wrist, over his glove. Claws sliding uselessly against the leather and through the spectral fur. Solid, vaguely warm, as if he too had forgotten the heat a body holds, the weight. Lingering against nothing but air.

\---  
-why is he silent-  
\---

Mitron lets go of Ardbert’s hand once he realizes he holds it. Almost to his chest, far from his axe. He could swing one-handed, if awkwardly. At an angle meant more to clobber than to strike. Ardbert finds himself not wanting to, letting his hand linger outstretched almost-touching.

He watches Mitron watch his hand. Lets it drop. Sighs, adjusting to something that is almost-solid. The room is dim, save where they both stand ill at ease.

\---

There is little to look at inside. The dark of the main platform, swirling runes that open up to let in the white light of the Empty. The soft glow of Ardbert’s form. 

“Don’t suppose you know what happened here.”

“We failed,” Mitron says with little intonation. “You were the one who struck us down.”

Us. Ardbert only sees one body, and it belongs to neither of them. “Loghrif is gone then.”

What can be seen of Mitron’s face breaks. Lips curved into a snarl, the scar over one side warping the curve further. He looks away, the black of his hood obscuring the red of his mask but little of the tension in his form.

“The Light was too much. For us. For her.”

Ardbert moves a hand to clap over the top of Mitron’s arm where there are no silvered spikes. He does not expect to meet flesh, solid and distantly cold. He does not expect Mitron’s exhale to hiss from him, a shudder through his body that Ardbert can see under the robes and in the jagged shift of the fractals behind them.

The men that caused the Flood look at each other. Face, to where their hands touch, rough leather and silken shadow, porcelain smooth over a face crumpled in emotion. The curve of Bravura’s sharp edge, stained with blood.

Ardbert notices Mitron lingers there. Still grimacing, even if Ardbert cannot quite imagine the Ascian minds bloodstains. Let alone mortal ones. Ardbert knows who he killed last.

Mitron’s masked face finds his again. Ardbert keeps the contact to his shoulder as he pulls Bravura out from its various straps.

The axe is disappointingly silent when it drops to the ground. Its reflection is a haze, between the colored glass floor and the inner glow that suffuses the weapon, even far from Ardbert’s hand. 

“Don’t think we could do much to each other with it,” he explains after the fact. After Mitron remembered to move from the mechanical organs of the Sin Eater’s control, after they had moved to sit a distance away. The lights stay dimmed; Ardbert casts a wan glow by himself that is plenty to see by. 

“A pity.” Ardbert huffs. Agreement, grief, a clench of his free hand into empty air. Mitron’s gaze is lost in the dark as he continues. “Not even if you willed it?”

“I think I would have noticed if my will mattered.”

Amh Araeng. The wave of the Flood, white brighter than the sun and cold enough to chill the soul. Minfilia’s final edict.

Mitron tilts his head to the side. Regards Ardbert with something that only tries for indifference, but with their hands still linked only manages awkwardness.

“It did enough to foil us, and leave us both here.”

Ardbert pulls his hand away. Harsh enough to jostle Mitron, a choking sound in his throat. Harsh enough to make the lights dim another fraction, the scar marring dark skin no longer visible.

He doesn’t know who shivers first. The Ascian with his hand still lingering in the air, static as Light. Ardbert lets that be the answer, watches for a moment in the wavering light as the other man gapes.

Reaches back bereft of grace. 

\---

Mitron crashes against Ardbert’s chest. Mask askance, porcelain bumping against the hardened leather of his cuirass and the metal of his guards. Soundless, though there should be something sharp, something harsh as Mitron’s face meets rough protection.

Silvered claws catch on air. Over a gambeson, leather straps, the muscle of Ardbert’s arm. Despite the swiftness with which the Ascian is brought in against the warrior’s chest, there’s no retaliation.

Only a snarl as Ardbert’s fingers catch under the pointed edge of the mask. The red bright like fresh blood that neither has, pale green eyes lit with desperation under the shadows of the slits cut in for sight. Mitron doesn’t pull away, doesn’t flinch from Ardbert trailing his hand up to the edge of the mask where it sinks below the hood. Throws it away, hears the clatter of it striking the ground, sliding away.

Long hair, coarse and tousled. It tangles in his thick gloves easily, gets tugged this way and that. Mitron fights the motion without seeking distance. His gaze set on Ardbert’s, confusion tinted with anger, with want. 

“What is it, hero? Does it pain you still?”

Fingers tighten on Mitron’s capelet, between the silvered spikes that jut out from his shoulders. The man shivers, completely foreign in the muscled body he holds. Mitron’s own hands seek Ardbert, tug him close as if the darkness was unwanted.

Imagine that.

“What do you think?”

Mitron pauses. Bites out some sound that doesn’t know to be a sob, a sharp retort. Ardbert pulls on the man’s hair, finds himself not being rough. Not enough to dislodge the hood from him, or to do more than keep Mitron’s face where it is before he thinks to look away again. “You started this.”

“I sought something other than this.”

He pulls the Ascian’s hood off at that. Makes him look more like a bedraggled human, hair a rat’s nest from where it had rested under a hood and been jostled by a warrior’s glove. What force is in him is tempered, made into a controlled exhale that comes out sharp and tired, a wince to curve Mitron’s lips as his fingers tense in the man’s blond hair.

“I’m not going to fight you.”

“Do you not learn of your mistakes?”

Green eyes made brittle, steely and bright. Rain falling on Laxan Loft, lavender leaves lashed down from the trees and shadows stripped from stone. Cyella’s goading screams.

Neither of them has heard anything else since then.

“That’s not why I won’t fight you.”

Mitron pulls away. Tries to, scrambling to push his claws against Ardbert’s chest, stretch his arms so there’s space between them, less of a soul’s burning light.

Still unmasked. Breaths hissing harsh from the Ascian’s chest. Lingering within arm’s reach, even when Ardbert has settled his arms by his own side, keeping his own support.

\---

Ardbert says that he has a mission. Some mission, that he cannot start to place. Mitron has less than that. But, bereft of meaning in killing him, Ardbert will not do so.

No one else, nothing else, has been able to see him. No one else, nothing else, will ever know Mitron is in pain. The Ascian is not his mission. He can do nothing else.

Mitron fades out of the room with a shiver. 

A sigh. Ardbert waits until even his own light dims before standing up and going outside.

\---

There is no way to measure the passage of time atop the great sin eater’s back. The glassy skull-cap reflects the same eternal light, and neither Ardbert nor his reflection on the blue needs to breathe. Clouds sit and melt overhead, their wan shadows mixing in with the white below.

Ardbert only goes outside out of habit. Muscle memory, putting strain on his eyes since it’s the only thing he can feel anymore. 

A shadow shifts below his feet. His reversed reflection turns, catches sight of Mitron sitting down by its side. Ardbert himself only sees empty air, before canting his gaze downwards proper. Uncomfortable, with no real way to fix it; it is better than looking out over the empty expanse.

“Can’t join me outside?”

Mitron shakes his head. The glassy surface warps the motion, tan skin and blond hair rippling as if through water. What Ardbert sees of his expression is off-balance, unable to meet his gaze by design. By lingering will.

“Can you hear me?”

A nod. A sigh from above, Ardbert shifting his legs with restlessness he has gotten used to.

“Not like there’s much to see out here.”

\---

It comes in pieces, voices dulled by crystal and stagnant glass. Mitron almost leaning against Ardbert’s reflection, stopped only by how it is intangible. Ardbert himself fares little better, fingers tapping against his shadow’s.

Loghrif fell. Mitron turned; whether immediately or after a short flight, neither remembers. Neither cares to remember, the Ascian going ashen. Unmasked, it is easy to see the twist of his lip, the hurt. Ardbert pushes onwards. They didn’t see the Flood at the start. Closed in around them, everything fading into the distance until there simply was none.

He doesn’t remember all that they had been planning before that. Only that they chose to try and fight it, fight the end. Ardbert sees Mitron sigh, curl inwards. When time catches up to them both again, it is Mitron’s voice that breaks the silence. An oddly familiar situation for him, even if not his.

Mitron explains little more when Ardbert presses. Only that it was when he met Loghrif. Long before they thought to take up arms, even against the end of the world. Not this one, if Ardbert must know. It surprises neither of them. 

“Why come here then?”

“To fix my own. Our own.” Mitron pauses, tilts his head to meet Ardbert’s gaze. Green on washed-out blue. “As you did.”

Ardbert grumbles a reply. Shrugs. Continues, clarity born from experience guiding his words. The Man in White- Mitron’s sigh, a complaint waved away- the Source. A world alien yet familiar. 

Mitron’s silence. Gaze averted, a demand he continue. Ardbert is no riveting storyteller; Mitron speaks only to avoid.

“Not your home either then.”

“Loghrif’s,” he says, as if that was the end of it. As if Ardbert’s piercing stare would get nothing more. He still relents. “Even if she kept forgetting. She must… she was away too long. Mayhap…”

Mitron tilts his gaze upwards, downwards into where the crystalline top of the Sin Eater’s skull reflects pristine white light.

Mayhap Loghrif is not trapped in a hell of her own making. Mayhap she never returns to find Mitron, to sit by his side, to watch eternity find its end in static.

Mitron finishes in a quiet rasp. Halting, fading out. A half-hearted nudge for Ardbert to continue speaking that fails to work. The Ascian seems awfully small beneath him, left only as a reflection without his own body. Fading where the glow of Ardbert’s own form overwhelms. 

Heroes are not meant to stand alone. Such was Minfilia’s final edict. Such was his greatest mistake, staring at the Shadowkeeper with rain in her voice.

He pushes himself up. Finds his balance, the white edge of the main body. 

\---

Mitron waits. Reminds himself Ardbert is an enemy. Reminds himself he will be back.

\---

Their bodies cannot crash together. Not with Mitron’s serving as a structural feature. Not with Ardbert’s being buried gods know where away from here.

They make do as best they can. 

Mitron has kept his hood down, has kept his mask off. The capelet follows, a needless layer that can obscure form no longer. Gilded claws that have never needed to sink beneath armor, that make prising off clasps and buckles a fool’s errand. Red falls from his cheeks to underneath his collar to below Ardbert’s hands unable to figure out where the next set of closures fits. Blunted nails lacquered black sink into white fur, grasping arms and shoulders and the back of the collar.

Almost a pity to take it off. To rob himself of the different sensations, as surely as Ardbert strips down ghostly silks and heavy metal guards that clunk against the floor. The chill of the tile under his palm, stark against the hazy warmth of skin. The rasp of stubble, dry lips against the scar shifting his lip. Ardbert pulls back, breathing unsteady as ghosts should not manage; Mitron near has to fight him to pull him back again so close.

“Want this,” the Ascian rasps, closeness and the roughness of a warrior’s hands, a hero’s resolve. “It’s been…”

Too long. It will continue to be too long.

Ardbert thumbs at Mitron’s scar, where it meets the lip, where Mitron parts his mouth to take a finger within. The blunt edge of teeth, the damp of breath as it shudders out when Ardbert leans in to replace it with his own. Briefly, only enough to have Mitron whine when he recovers his own distance.

“Like that?”

Spilled upon the ground. Breathing harshly, hands over what bare skin has been made or preserved. One of Ardbert’s pulling on blond hair, baring the throat, breath visibly caught under his stare. 

“Do you really have to ask?”

“I want you to know what you are asking for.” Who he is asking it from. Pale blue eyes, a low growl. Another kiss, the Ascian pulled into an arc, hands scrabbling over the fallen hero’s back. When he pulls back, when he remembers to breathe, he releases Mitron’s hair. Rubs at the back of his neck, soothing the ache of a brief tug, following the whine up the other man’s throat. Mitron nods, swallows. Swallows again, air instead of heat, finds Ardbert’s eyes properly. 

Lunges forwards to sink in.

\---

Mitron’s eyes water when pinned to his own body. Hair fanned out over pearlescent tile, hands tense on Ardbert’s bare shoulder. Tile that no longer feels cold, interrupted by the faint glow of an aetheric body.

It’s almost easy to forget. To let lie. 

Ardbert rolls over, pulls Mitron over himself. Bracing a hand at the other man’s waist, and with the other pulling Mitron’s hair behind his ear. 

“You won’t hide from me here.”

It doesn’t stop an Ascian’s tear. Merely makes them glitter against bright green eyes, makes him lean into Ardbert’s hand against his face. Petulant, almost.

Ardbert drags his mouth to his. Eases him in against his body, into a rhythm that has them forget time again.

\---

The lights are dimmer in the aftermath. What they have in lieu of bodies feels exhaustion, feels a brief reprieve from hunger, from solid weight.

Ardbert feels Mitron trace his spine, his back. No sweat clings to his palm. What breath swells and falls is slowly becoming steady. In the moment, he watches Mitron calm himself. Slowly pull back into his own body, into the chill of an empty room and the ache of a tumble on the floor. When he rolls off the Ascian, the cold of the tile is so distant it doesn’t startle.

He should be unnerved. He turns to watch Mitron instead.

“I don’t have to go anywhere,” and he leaves the yet unsaid. Uncertain as it is, Ardbert sees no point in it. 

“Yet you will have to.”

Ardbert shrugs. Jostles Mitron enough to have the Ascian give him what would pass for a very weak glare.

“Not yet. Not in the mood to leave you here, just like that.”

\---

Mitron waits until the afterglow is done to open a glowing rune, the blinding blankness of outside pressing light against their eyes and revealing their clothes strewn on the floor.

Still, bereft of time, they let themselves linger. Let themselves help each other redress, fitting armor and cloth over each other. It is perhaps a pointless exercise: Ardbert feels himself no heavier with all his metal protections than he did bare against Mitron’s body. Lighter, perhaps, without the other’s touch.

He keeps his hands bare to the last. Intent on getting the most out of this moment. On watching Mitron’s eyes follow his movements right up to the moment he picks up the red mask. It wasn’t among their discarded clothing before, but he imagines that of all the tricks Ascians have, recovering a lost item such as this would be a trifle. Easier than walking to find his axe, where he’d thrown it aside just as soon as he’d returned to the wide main room.

Mitron doesn’t replace the mask upon his face. Merely holds it, between Ardbert and himself, both mostly dressed. Mostly themselves again. Words start false upon his lips, snarled on the edge of his scar. But what determination had pushed them both to end the world would prove successful, managing eventually to string together meaning.

“I did not expect you to still offer an enemy kindness.”

Ardbert shrugs. Looks at him bereft of Laxan Loft, of the pouring rain. Of the Shadowkeeper’s blood.

“It cannot get me in any more trouble,” he starts, almost a bark of laughter, “nor do I want to let go of it. Besides, you needed such.”

The Ascian stares. Ardbert sees him shift, between himself and the mask in his clawed hands. The simple words, the simple want. Bare hands that reach up to pluck the mask away and meet no resistance.

Before Ardbert can send it clattering to the ground again, Mitron dispels it.

“Be sure to return then,” the Ascian says, “when you do leave.”

Ardbert sighs, and drags Mitron to sit besides him by the window, watching the unchanging white outside.

**Author's Note:**

> this all comes around because of a book club prompt, courtesy of illegible. but also because i got fucked up by eden.


End file.
